Thousands sign petition telling Trump not to erase Stonewall’s trans history
Protestors outside the Stonewall Inn. (Getty)
More than 25,000 people have signed a petition demanding that the Trump administration reverse the systemic erasure of trans history on the Stonewall uprising website.
Mentions of transgender and non-binary people were removed from the Stonewall national monument’s page on the National Park Service website, despite trans women of colour leading the historic riots in 1969.
The monument’s description replaced the acronym LGBTQ+, which is inclusive of trans people, with LGB. It now only mentions lesbian, gay and bisexual people in its explanation of what happened following the police raids on the Stonewall Inn, in New York.
The change caused an uproar among historians and LGBTQ+ people, who accused Donald Trump of attempting to “erase our history”, and hundreds of queer people marched outside the Stonewall bar on 16 February to protest.
“Trans people have been here since the beginning of time,” Tanya Asapansa-Johnson Walker a prominent activist, said during the protest. “We fought in all the wars. We’re creators, we have families and children. We’re just as much a part of this world as anyone else.
“We’re here to stay and we will not be erased by a Christo-fascist, neo-Nazi administration.”
After the protest, a petition urging the government to stop erasing trans history, as well as the uprising’s legacy, was created by activism media site Care2.
“In a shocking and unjust move, the United States National Park Service has erased any mention of transgender people from the history of the Stonewall uprising,” a Care2 spokesperson wrote in the petition. The change was “further erasing the contributions of transgender individuals like Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera”, they added.
“These courageous individuals not only contributed to the uprising but also founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, a group dedicated to supporting homeless trans youngsters in New York City. Erasing their legacy and [that] of all transgender people from this pivotal moment in history is an act of deliberate harm.”
At the time of reporting, the petition has received some 25,800 signatures, closing in on to its goal of 30,000.
Care2 demanded in an open letter that the government reinstates mention of trans people in the Stonewall uprising page and ensures “this vital part of our shared history is preserved for future generations”.
It went on to say: “Transgender people have always been a central part of the LGBTQ+ movement, and we cannot allow them to be written out of history.”
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